This is Love. Part 1

(Continuing from This is Lust...)

Love is the opposite!  Love can only come from God, and love is God!  Seek God and find love. Seek love and find God. J
Let's take a look at a very special verse I found last week.  What better place to study love than the book of Song of Songs!  If you are a romance reader or love guru, check out this entire book sometime for a good read!

Song of Songs 8:6-7

“Place me like a seal over your heart,
like a seal on your arm;
for love is as strong as death,
its jealousy unyielding as the grave.
It burns like blazing fire,
like a mighty flame.

Many waters cannot quench love;rivers cannot wash it away.
  If one were to give

all the wealth of this house for love,
 it would be utterly scorned.”

This verse is so beautiful, so powerful, and so full of knowledge about love.  Take a look at the first part, “Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm…”  The author is begging God to not just love him, but to place a seal over His heart and around his arm, showing that he was God’s and God was his.  I think of this “seal” like a wedding ring.  A man gives a woman a wedding ring for 2 reasons. 1) to show her that he is hers and she is his for life.  It’s a daily reminder of their love for one another. 2) to show other men that her heart has already been taken by another man.

Some girls wear purity rings to show that their purity has been given to God’s will, which means they are waiting until marriage to have sex.  What a beautiful promise to wear on your finger every day; the promise of love and fulfillment in a long term goal.

 I see lots of students my age wear necklaces with special meanings.  The ministry I’m involved in has a joke about wearing your “Jesus necklace” to show that you are a Christian.  This is just a joke that came up because we noticed almost all of us happen to wear necklaces with a cross of some sort on them.  My Catholic friends wear a rosary around their neck.  People who have lost loved ones sometimes wear a memorial necklace.  High school girls wear their sweetheart’s ring around their neck.  The examples are endless.

So why do we wear special things around our arms, fingers, or neck?  I can’t tell you the exact answer, but it seems to be a special place for people or things we love.  The bible talks extensively about seals and metaphorically hanging things around your neck.  2 Timothy 2:19 says, “Nevertheless, God’s solid foundation stands firm, sealed with this inscription: ‘The Lord knows those who are his…’”  Even God seals things with inscriptions.  It’s a sign of permanent importance, love, remembrance.  It is a covenant, or a promise.

So what’s the seal over your heart?  Is it God?  Your boyfriend?  A hobby?  A talent, maybe basketball or volleyball?  Do you put these things above your love for God?  I know it’s “just jewelry” to many of us, but think about it…what you put around your neck everyday really does say something about you.

Also, have you ever asked God to place you as a seal over his heart?  What about around his arm?  Do you want God to love you like that?  What are you afraid of?  Allow him to love you and consume your heart with His love, I promise you won’t regret it.